Reconstruction of underlying surfaces from scanned data using lines of curvature

•We generated bidirectional boundary curves using a family of curves for reconstructing the surface.•We forced the trajectory of a point on the section curve to approach the line of curvature with less torsion of the surface to be generated.•We generated high-quality surfaces having a natural curvature flow. [Display omitted] This study presents a new method for reconstructing an underlying surface from scanned data of styling design objects. Our approach is based on sweep-based modeling, in which a surface is generated by sweeping a specified section curve along a 3D spine curve. However, it is difficult to determine the spine curve directly from the scanned data. Therefore, we generated a surface such that the trajectory of a point on the section curve approaches the line of curvature with less torsion of the surface to be generated while transforming the section curve. Compared with conventional approaches, our method can act as a guiding principle for reconstructing underlying surfaces via reverse engineering. The results of our experiments demonstrate that high-quality surfaces can be generated from real-world scanned data.